Shadow & Soul by Susan Fanetti Page A

on the side of the cage, near the cat. Immediately, a paw lashed out and left a long red seam on Michael’s palm—but he didn’t even flinch.
     
    “Look at him. He’s not mean. He’s scared. God, I fucking hate people.”
     
    Without thinking about what she was doing, Faith put her hand on Michael’s leg.
     
    He stared down at it, his hand still flat on the cage. For maybe as long as a minute, the three of them were still and quiet. Then Michael said, “I was a foster kid.”
     
    She knew that. She’d overheard Aunt Bibi and Uncle Hooj talking about it. But that seemed a wrong thing to tell him. So she said only, “Yeah?”
     
    “Yeah. I went in when I was two. I never got adopted or even had a family placement for very long. A couple times a year, though, they’d do this adoption fair thing. You know what that is?”
     
    She didn’t, so she shook her head. But he was still staring at her hand, so she said, “No.”
     
    “It’s like this here—a bunch of foster kids get dressed up as good as they can and get taken to a park. People who are thinking about adopting go to the park and look over all the kids. If they see one they like, they take them home. It’s more complicated than that, but that’s basically it. A bunch of unwanted kids trying to be was wantable as they could be, a bunch of rich assholes walking around deciding which one matched their furniture the best. It fucking sucked.”
     
    Faith felt her eyes burning. She didn’t know what to say or do—all of this was way heavier than she knew how to deal with. So she squeezed his leg a little. That felt silly, but she couldn’t think of anything better.
     
    He twitched under her touch and then went on with a story that wasn’t yet finished. “People used to come up to me all the time. I guess I was a cute kid. I mean, I don’t know. It’s not like I have pictures. All I saw in the mirror was me. But people said all the time that I was…was… beautiful ”—he flinched and almost spat out that word—“so lots of people would come up to me at those things. But I never got picked. Probably for the best.”
     
    While he’d been talking, the cat had inched closer to his hand. Michael had never moved it, even though blood was now dripping off the side of his palm from the slice the cat had made through it. Now, while they were quiet again, the cat stood and pressed his body against the side of the cage, against Michael’s hand.
     
    And started to purr like a motorboat.
     
    Michael laughed. When the cat turned and put his head against the wire, he finally moved his hand, sliding his fingers into the cage and scratching furry black ears. Then he opened the cage and pulled the cat out.
     
    “What are you doing?” The woman was back, but she pulled up short when she saw the cat draped over Michael’s shoulder. He hissed at the woman and then turned his face toward Michael’s neck.
     
    “How much to adopt him?”
     
    “What?”
     
    “How much?”
     
    The woman stood there with her mouth open, blinking. Faith’s father would have said she was ‘catching flies.’ Then she closed her mouth and narrowed her eyes. “Take him. I’ll waive the fee. You have to put him in a carrier to get him home, though, and he’s not going to like that at all.”
     
    “It’ll be okay. He knows I’m not gonna hurt him.”
     
    Faith didn’t know how Michael thought he was going to be able to keep a cat in the clubhouse, which was where he lived. But she kept her mouth shut. It felt like something important was happening here, between Michael and this cat, and between Michael and her.
     
    He was right about the carrier. The cat went from Michael’s arms into the cardboard box without a fuss. And then they walked back down through the park.
     
    He walked her to Dante, cradling the carrier at his chest, talking into the air holes.
     
    “Tom is a stupid name for a cat. They didn’t even care enough to give him a good